In the airport, they had some plush toys. Including some airplanes that were marked NorthWest Airlines. NWA was, of course, swallowed up by Delta a couple of years ago. This lead me to wonder, did the plus toys have NWA’s logo and all despite the fact that it no longer exists, or because it no longer exists?

I don’t know what the merchandising rights on such things are. Do the airlines pay to have the toys made, or do the doys pay the airlines for use of their logo and so on. Is it advertising, or is it merchandise?

If it’s merchandise, then I would think that it would probably cost less to use the NWA logo than Delta’s logo, since NWA is defunct and therefore demand is low. But if it’s merchandise, why pay anybody? Why not just make something up? A three year old kid wouldn’t care.

Which makes me think its advertising, and that in Delta pay in fact be paying to put their logo there. If one of the main goals in advertising is to keep a brand in our consciousness, toys aren’t a bad way of doing that. On the other hand, it’s been two years since NWA went away. Why is that there?

Tangentially, the distinction between advertising and merchanising was one of the main factors in Alan Moore’s big break from DC comics many years ago. He was supposed to get a cut of any Watchmen merchandising, but DC simply classified just about everything it sold with Watchmen on it (except the comic book, of course) as “advertising.”